Murdered armoured car guard laid to rest in her wedding dress

Shaamini Yogaretnam, edmontonjournal.com06.26.2012

G4S security guards wore uniforms to the funeral service for Michelle Shegelski, one of three G4S security guards killed in an armed robbery at Hub Mall at the University of Alberta on June 15.Shaughn Butts
/ edmontonjournal.com

Funeral service for Michelle Shegelski, one of three G4S security guards killed in an armed robbery at Hub Mall at the University of Alberta on June 15.Shaughn Butts
/ edmontonjournal.com

EDMONTON - Michelle Ernst donned a Victorian wedding gown she designed herself. Wearing an ivory dress with ornate lace trim dotting the scooped neckline, Michelle was the “personification of youthful beauty,” said Marcia Loder, the marriage commissioner who officiated her wedding April 21.

She wore her dress with delicate capped sleeves one last time Tuesday afternoon, as family, friends and co-workers gathered to mourn the slain armoured guard who took her husband’s last name Shegelski.

“Her family thought it best to have her wear the gown she wore on the happiest day of her life,” Loder said Tuesday at Connelly-McKinley Funeral home, once again addressing the familiar faces of those who loved Michelle, but this time officiating her funeral, three days shy of the newlywed’s 27th birthday.

Shegelski’s funeral was the last of three funeral services for the armoured guards killed June 15 during a bank machine robbery at the University of Alberta’s HUB Mall. Shegelski, 26, Brian Ilesic, 35, and Eddie Rejano, 39, all employees of G4S Cash Solutions Canada, were allegedly killed by a co-worker who is behind bars awaiting trial. A fourth victim, Matthew Schuman remains in hospital.

The more than 30 wooden pews that lined the Wild Rose Chapel at the funeral home were filled with many decorated servicemen and women. Fellow armoured guards from G4S and a few from competing company Brinks sat alongside highly decorated soldiers and members from EMS, white hats tucked under their arms and white belts wrapped around their navy dress uniforms. Several Parks Services Rangers also attended.

On June 20, Victor Shegelski, Michelle’s husband took to his Facebook profile to ask a favour of those who would attend his wife’s funeral.

“Any kind of medals, service uniforms or awards of merit are encouraged to be worn; this would mean a lot to me, and I want the world to see how great this loss is,” Victor wrote. A former member of the Canadian Forces, Victor had been twice deployed to Afghanistan. “She inspired me to better myself, and brought out the love and emotion I thought I left in the desert,” Victor wrote in a separate post. Michelle was honoured as a fallen comrade, a lost friend and a beloved wife and daughter.

“She gave off sparkles wherever she went,” said Michelle’s mother, Cheryl Ernst in a eulogy for her daughter, comparing her to sparklers atop birthday cakes.

Cheryl’s daughter loved the written word. Michelle wrote poems and short stories, some of them on the walls of her childhood bedroom in red, green and blue acrylic paint.

The centrepieces at the Shegelski wedding were a reflection of the passion Michelle had for literature and the way she and Victor had merged their lives.

Topping the tables were a stack of books, some from Michelle’s library, others from Victor’s, bound together with twine.

They shared a special bond over an Emily Dickinson poem. Victor had the first two lines of the poem tattooed on his forearm when he got back from his second tour of Afghanistan.

“Because I could not stop for Death, /He kindly stopped for me,” it reads.

Michelle planned to get the next two lines tattooed on her after their wedding.

“The carriage held but just ourselves/And Immortality.”

The same two lines were written in the centre of the funeral program, underneath a photo of the blushing couple on their wedding day, surrounded by the words Michelle wrote on her blog.

Michelle’s brother, Kenneth, and sister, Christine, both read excerpts from her blog at the service. “While I type these letters someone dies, is born, changes jobs, loves,” Christine read, as two multicoloured panes of stained-glass filled the back of the room with tinted light.

“Seconds. The world is built on seconds.”

Although their initial meeting was tense, Victor quickly fell in love with Michelle’s high-speed spirit. Michelle, however, was determined to hate him.

“It was the only thing she ever failed at,” said Victor, dressed in the long coat-tailed, turn-of-the-century tuxedo jacket he wore when he married Michelle.

“We had something I once never thought existed.”

A video tribute was created for Michelle. As the three hanging lamps in the centre of the room dimmed and the projector flickered on, Michelle’s family left their seats and began to exit the room. As they walked across the front of the chapel, they lingered on a vision in ivory, her hair slightly curled, lying serenely in the dress she wore when she was happiest, wanting to take in every last image of their “Mic” before saying goodbye.

The images swept across the screen like flipping through a family photo album. A young Michelle sits in a high chair with what could only be spaghetti sauce smeared all over face. An adolescent Michelle poses on her birthday, a chocolate frosted cake with sparklers in the foreground.

Over the changing images, Mumford and Sons’ Winter Winds played.

“Let the memories be good for those who stay,” they sang. In the last pew, a woman wearing an EMS uniform wiped away her tears. A man, seated next to her, reached his arm across her back and stroked her shoulder.

The final images were of Michelle laughing in the dress, walking down the aisle to a man she hoped to spend the rest of her life with, posing with three bridesmaids in purple dresses holding white bouquets, flexing her muscles, holding a bouquet of brilliant purple flowers, as the words “Forever in our hearts” appeared on the bottom of the screen.

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